MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at 847-491-4890 or w-leopold@northwestern.edu

October 26, 2004

World Renowned Philosopher to Lecture

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Jürgen Habermas — Germany's preeminent living philosopher and a public intellectual on the order of Jean-Paul Sartre in post-World War II France or John Dewey in the American tradition — will deliver a free and public lecture Friday, Nov. 5, at Northwestern University.

A visiting professor at Northwestern University for 10 years, Habermas will provide a European perspective of the future of international law and its implications for American foreign policy in a speech titled “The Kantian Project of a Cosmopolitan Order — Does It Still Have a Chance?”

The lecture will take place at 4 p.m. in Room 217 of Fisk Hall, 1845 Sheridan Road, on the Evanston campus. A reception celebrating the professor’s recent Kyoto Prize will follow in the nearby McCormick Tribune Center lobby.

Habermas is a world-renowned social and political philosopher whose influence has been felt in virtually every discipline in the humanities and social sciences. From his student days until the present, he has spoken out clearly and courageously — always with considerable effect and sometimes at great personal cost — on the major moral and political questions of the day.

In 1953, when only 24, Habermas ignited a national debate by writing a letter to Germany's most influential newspaper criticizing the signs of sympathy with Nazi ideology in a set of lectures from 1935 which philosophy giant Martin Heidegger had republished.

Since then Habermas has continuously contributed to public debates on a range of issues including the violations of civil liberties, attempts to “historicize” the Holocaust, German reunification, intervention in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq.

It is as much for these actions as for his enormous scholarly accomplishments that Habermas has been awarded virtually every important literary prize Germany offers, culminating in the 2001 Peace Prize of the German Publishers. He also has won many of Europe’s most prestigious awards, including the Sonning Prize of Denmark — the first German so honored since Albert Schweitzer — and Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award. This year he received the Kyoto Prize, Japan’s most prestigious award to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to humanity.

For further information about the Habermas lecture sponsored by Northwestern’s Office of the Provost and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, call (847) 467-3005.